Scammers are common to trick and/or even rig a lot of people, usually their money, personal info, bank information; anything. There are even various of different ways that scammers can often scam people out of stuff without the person being scam never actually realizing it, and this can extend to not only one person, but several people or even a business. Small business, in particular, are often the target for most scammers since they don’t have the cybersecurity support or even accounting processes of larger companies.
Scammers can also use trending topics and confusing events to dupe business owners and employees into sharing personal information. Allowing small business to be exposed to scammers can cause the amount of interest or value from your business to decrease along with people won’t trust you on your business and the reputation of it could be damaged, so let’s take a look at some of the ways scammers try to con small businesses and try to avoid them:
- Spear Phishing – Phishing is a common scam where fraudsters email people and trick them into revealing sensitive information or sending money. Spear phishing ups the ante with highly targeted attacks on specific individuals or groups; often leading to massive payouts. In spear-phishing scheme, a hacker may pose as a colleague, boss, partner business, or friend requesting money or payment information. It’s often incredibly difficult to differentiate a spear-phishing attack from standard email correspondence, so make sure to analyze the information from where it’s coming from or train your team to never give unverified money requests.
- Fake SEO experts – One budding scam is when an “SEO expert” reaches out to a small business with a detailed plan for increasing its Google rank – for a fee, of course. More often than not, it will be a full-blown scam, either just taking payment and not doing the work – and possibly stealing your payment details – or doing the work and continuing to charge you for months or years down the line Then, when you try to stop paying, they’ll threaten you with a negative SEO attack. So the next time you receive a email from a company soliciting any service, you should ABSOLUTELY BE SKEPTICAL!
- Fake invoicing or domain name scams – If a scammer gains access to an email account, they can intercept and edit incoming emails from companies you work with, like suppliers and vendors. This scam can also occur through the mail. Scammers may send invoices for supplies that were never delivered, or they may even request money for web domain name charges. Business owners should train anyone who opens the U.S. mail to not fall victim to fake invoices for internet domain renewals, domains are even purchased and renewed online. There are marketing companies who use the U.S. mail to send renewal notices for domains in hopes of getting that unknowing business to make a payment.
- Deceptive hosting offers – Scammers often pretend to be legitimate companies to trick consumers. Scammers set up fake websites and “hijack” your company name and address. They may also use brand hijacking – blatant copying and misusing company logos and website content – to impersonate a business and deceive unsuspecting visitors. That’s why when your going into any website that doesn’t look and seem legitimate in what they do, it’s probably a scammer running that website.
If you want to learn more about ways to prevent small business from being scammed, check out this website:
In conclusion, we talked about the many different types of scamming that can come into play when talking about or targeting small businesses.
- Spear phishing with fake emails coming from a boss, coworker, employer, or any person associated with your job try to ask for money.
- Fake SEO experts where they make fraudulent type of SEO and demand or expects the person who is using it to try and is stealing your payment for gain, not to mention, you get threatened with SEO attacks if you stop paying.
- Domain name charges where the scammer will try to get the individual to try and use invoice to get supplies that were never needed or delivered, and even might ask for money through mail.
- Finally, deceptive hosting offers, where the scammer might pretend to be a company with a fake or non-legitimate website, and could “hijack” the business that they come across with.
It is ALWAYS important to try and to some research or even be aware of the mischievous work of scammers. Knowing how they operate, what they do, how they do it; trying to learn the overall bases of how they are in the digital platform. But anyone who’s creating a small business or start-up, make sure you know these types of scams because one day, you might come upon this type of scam yourself. Good luck!
If you want to see more of my blogs, check out my one on the different form securities (PII, HIPAA, FERPA, PCI):
https://norfleet.mydcts.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=276&action=edit